Inspiration & Worship

With October comes an awareness of the harvest, even among city dwellers. We like to observe what’s going on in countryside fields. We relish the rich kaleidoscope of bounty at local farmers markets. We cherish our jaunts to apple orchards, pumpkin fields and vineyards.

Especially in our lush and fertile Midwest, something about the harvest makes us proud and a little awed by what our rich soil can do.

Because most of the Bible plays out in agrarian societies, scripture is rich with earthy metaphors about sowing and reaping spiritual life and death. Here are a few verses to contemplate as we pick out those perfect pumpkins.

May we never forget that our willingness to compassionately sow the truth of Jesus Christ into the hearts of other people – so that they, too, can know him – nets the greatest harvest of all.

Matthew 9:35-38:

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

In John 15:1-11, Jesus says:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you.

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart

from me you can do nothing.” ❚